The Study On The Symbiosis Between Monastic Education And School Education Of The Dai In Xishuang Banna

The monastic education is one of the forms of traditional education for the Dai in Xishuang Banna. In the long-term historical development of the Dai in Xishuang Banna, Theravada Buddhism in Yunnan, its monastic education and the daily life of the Dai are closely connected. Theravada Buddhism and its monastic education have become the most important part of the Dai culture. Besides propagating Buddhism, the monastic education also undertakes the task of transmitting the Dai culture; it is not only the center of religious activities, but also the fixed location for cultural spreading and ethnic education. The temple is the school. Buddha is the teacher. The sacred books are textbooks. Monks are students. And the temples have become the special schools for the Dai. We can say that the traditional culture of the Dai in Xishuang Banna is transmitted by the integration of the monastic education. As the society changes and the modern school education gets involved, there exist monastic education and school education in the Dai society in Xishuang Banna. But now, there are conflicts between them. Although the government has formulated a series of policies to dispel the conflict, the conflict has not been eliminated. However, it has become further strengthened.After the intervention of school education, many problems appear in monastic education, such as the contents being narrow, the functions being secular, the management being loosing, and so on. Before the intervention of school education, monastic education includes not only various kinds of Buddhist scriptures, but also astronomy, calendar, history, geography, medicine, law, literature, and a variety of knowledge about production and life. After the intervention of school education, the content of monastic education has mainly served for all kinds of Buddhist ceremonies; the functions of monastic education have been being weak; the monks' life style has turned secular; all kinds of ceremonies about offering money to Buddhist temples have secular trend; the management for monastic education has been looser than before: many religious rules and Buddhist disciplines have been broken. And these problems have led to decline of monastic education.There are many problems in school education. It is short in educational resources; its running model is unitary; the evaluation criteria are unified. And there exists a conflict: multi-national students receive education in the same school by one culture. So school education can not take on the task of transmitting the Dai Culture, and can not develop the local economy. At present, the state of school education in Xishuang Banna is that the enthusiasm of enrollment and entering high school for many students is not high, that "intermittent dropout" is extremely serious and the students' academic achievement is generally poor, that the enthusiasm of teachers is not high, that the conflict among teachers and students often occurs, and that the professional structure is not appropriate. At the same time, there is a conflict between monastic education and school education in student source, time, teaching context, the students' outlook on life, the identification of "the monk student", and so on. The conflict makes both of them in bad station.To solve the problems of the education in ethnic area, we should analyze the problems from politics, economy and culture, avoiding single-factor analysis and cultural determinism tendency; we should combine the principal position and etic position, avoiding the tendency to cultural relativity; we should view culture by using dynamic foresight instead of geographical determinism of culture. Only in this way can we find the origin of the problems, and we can also find solutions to the problems fundamentally. By fieldwork to monastic education and school education of The Dai in Xishuang Banna, we find that the main reasons which lead to the opposition and conflict are the cultural self-confidence caused by the economic advantages and the rejection to other cultures, the related policies serving only for schools, the limitation of school education in transmitting the Dai culture, the content of school education divorced from the local life, which leads to popularity of "reading is useless", the monastic education being secular and the management being loosing, etc.By further analyzing the conflicts between monastic education and school education, we find that the conflicts can be fundamentally eliminated by the corresponding reform in related departments of government, schools, temples and families under the guidance of the concept of symbiosis, mutual respect, mutual accommodation, mutual complementation and mutual promotion. Firstly, we should theoretically recognize that temple education plays an important part in the daily life of the Dai, that it is necessarily to exist as school education, and that the existed conflicts are not inevitable; Secondly, when we make policies and measures, we should avoid the exclusion of the "one-sided" approach, by coordinating relevant departments and means of developing both sides. Thirdly, school education and monastic education should also fill up their own inadequacies; fourthly, the family should play more important role in education. These are the main strategies to deal effectively with the relationship between them.The concept of symbiosis about temple education and school education of the Dai in Xishuang Banna is also suitable for dealing with relationship among all kinds of forms of education in other ethnic areas or the way of cultural heritage. Because, how to deal with the relationship between the traditional education and the modern education, and how to transmit traditional culture is a local problem with specificity, and meanwhile is also a universal one. These problems also exist in other ethnic areas. Of course, the concept of symbiosis as well as various related strategies proposed in this study mainly base on the situation of temple education and school education in Xishuang Banna. They are pertinent, but still have their limitation; although they can offer references to policy making for local government, it is only a preliminary idea. Whether they have maneuverability and whether they can really play a role need to be further verified.